The Deadline
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Trap’s Irish squad fly out to Bulgaria today for the next step along the path to South Africa – hopefully. A draw or -whisper it – a victory brings the dream a little closer – the hope that this time next year an emerald tide will flood Jo’Burg and Cape Town and elsewhere to follow, once again, the Boys in Green at a World Cup.
It will of course follow the pattern of The Boys in Green qualifying for tournaments that require fans to re-mortgage their homes to get to. I was at the last Weltmeister, which was a little closer, in Germany in ’06.
It was an attempt to see each team – all 32 nations – on a budget of €150 per day. So that was including tickets, accomodation, food, etc. With hilarious and long-term consequences.
The piece below is from a time when the optimism and self-respect of the first round had just faded; I had already started collecting the plastic drink cups people left in the stands so I could claim the €1 refund, but had yet to steal gin from that homeless man in Frankfurt.
I lost my phone and with it all my photos on the second last night in Hamburg after an Italy game so the only graphic I could upload, apart from Il Trap, is the official form the German police made me sign in a Hannover interview room one morning. Instead reader, let me paint you a word picture! I offer you a three-year old article which was punched, with another deadline about to again disappear over the horizon, into an internet phone in Nuremburg’s Hauptmanhof one Sunday three years ago:
The GAA summer was still-born last weekend but this Sunday, as Cork meet Tipp in Thurles in the Munster senior hurling championship, the season will be very much alive and kicking.
Last summer as part of the Irish Examiner’s monday championship supplement, as the recesson began to bite I tried to guage how cheap one could get to Croke Park for a big game.
I planned to hitch from Kerry to the capital. Wearing a Cork jersey.
Ask a New York cabbie, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” and they’ll invariably tell you “practice, practice, practice”. With my collar pulled above the nape of my neck to shield myself from a sheet of the wettest Kerry rain, as I shuffled along the road between Killarney and Tralee before 8am on Saturday morning, I realised getting to Croke Park was a journey not dissimilar. But it’s more a case of thumb, thumb, thumb.
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I’m just back from covering the Cork City v Galway United game at Turner’s Cross. Around the corner, Musgrave Park was packed out for the Munster v Scarlets game. While it was the usual die hards who shuffled into the soccer game.
Maybe it’s time to follow baseball’s lead and have themed nights. Bring-your-boss night? Cowboys and Indians week? Rotten fruit: a funny ol game?
Here’s a selection of real promos from the States:
1. Disco Demolition Night
Disco-hating White Sox fans wrecked the Comiskey Park field when the Detroit Tigers visited Chicago, causing thousands of dollars in damages, as a “harmless” 1979 promotion created a near-riot and forced the Sox to forfeit the game. Believed to be the night the (disco) music died and it proved a costly 10c beer night. As the BeeGees sang: tragedy.
2. Hawaiian Night
The Phillies fill the area round their new ground with hula dancers, fans get traditional leis, and players posed in Hawaiian shirts for their scoreboard photos.
3. Mullet Night
The do that’s business in the front and party in the back, brings those same inclusive qualities to the ballpark. On Mullet Night, White Sox fans – again – wearing mullet wigs can parade around the ground while mullets are imposed on players’ scoreboard images. Here’s a fun fact, fact fans: a mullet is called a Bundesliga in the Czech Republic and it’s true, this promotion may not work in German soccer stadia.
There’s a piece in today’s Irish Examiner about three 5th-year lads (two from Rathgar, one from Wicklow) who told their parents they were having a sleepover in one of their places.
But unlike everyone else who used that trick and went bushing/cow-tipping/ happy-slapping, these legends went to Italy for the Ireland game last week.
There’s some quailty quotes from the so-called ‘ringleader’.
We texted to say we were all having a good time and they never suspected anything. That’s the beauty of text messages. If they had rung us during the match they would have heard the crowd singing The Fields of Athenry.
They sound like they were more organized than me to be fair.
La Tifosi as the sides came out.
The teams’ big entrance.
The crowd during the national anthems
View from the cheap seats
Kevin, left, me, right, and the happiest man in Irish football. In a Polizei hat.
Kevin reviews the Corriere dello Sport a la James Richardson
What. A. Fucking. Night.
Piece from today’s Examiner below.
YESTERDAY’s alcohol ban in central Bari, only lifted after last night’s match in the San Nicola Stadium, was about as futile and comical an exercise as one high-profile but uncapped League of Ireland player’s announcement of his retirement from international football a couple of seasons ago.
The estimated 6,000 plus Irish fans who clogged the arteries of the city on Tuesday night awoke yesterday with an Adriatic-sized hangover, hoarse throats and the realisation that a cure was not on the menu from our Italian hosts. But, as Groucho Marx famously stated, I don’t want to be a member of any club that will let me in anyway. Or, similarly, as one flag hanging in the Piazza yesterday explained: F**k the Recession, We’re on a Session. Indeed.
Few hours to kick off in Bari now; piece below from today’s Irish Examiner…
IAN RUSH couldn’t settle in Italy; the Welsh striker said it was like living in a foreign country. But San Nicola — the patron saint of Bari — is, they say, a friend to travellers and up to 6,000 Irish soccer fans were certainly making themselves at home in the coastal city yesterday.
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Met this fella in Bari today.
I’m off to Italy for Ireland’s qualifier with the Azzuri in Bari on Wednesday, via London for a couple of days thanks to Ryanair’s logistical Tourettes.
It may not be as good as a lion in a sidecar on a wall of death, see above greatest pic ever taken©, but it will be prettay, prettay close if we get, say, four points between Bulgaria and the Azzurri.
Jump the fence writes about the significance of the two games this week here.
I’ll blog away for the week and I’ll tweet the buildup and aftermath of the game and the match itself if i can get phone coverage in the stadium/cell/behind barricaded embassy gate. Goodbye readers. The two of ye can keep each other company for a bit.
